To Match or Not to Match?

I don't mind dyeing them to get a close match, though of course it'd be nice if i could get one out of the box so to speak. I'm weirdly picky about the styling and aesthetics of the bodies for my dolls though, given they're mostly on display and not something i change the clothes out on really, and finding bodies that I like is hard enough, so I'll take the mad scientist hassle that is dying a doll.

 

I am new here. I follow you on IG and we have discussed this there also, but I'm like you, I am bothered when I don't have a good match, but I am trying to learn to over look it. It's so expensive to keep getting new bodies.

 

Ideally, I want a full doll, perfect match, not hybrid. But realistically, my dolls' characters' bodies are almost as important as the head. For example, Cooper is a Migidoll Yujin on a Luts Muse body. The color match isn't great, but proportions are perfect. I had him on the default Migidoll body for a couple of years and as much as I wanted him to be perfect, I hated that body for him. It was chunky/stocky, and looked "soft". Cooper is meant to be tall, skin and bone. It just did not work at all, and he didn't feel like my character at all. Since switching, I just adore him so much more. I also have the situation where 9 of my 15 boys are Migidoll, and it would just be weird to me for everybody to have the exact same body.

On the other hand, none of my girls are hybrids. My female characters tend to go to one extreme or the other---either the body type is more important than the face, OR I fall in love with a face sculpt and don't even care what body she has as long as it doesn't suck.

 

Many of my dolls are now hybrids in some form or fashion, though I've always considered myself to prefer full dolls.

I don't mind some minor mismatch, especially with older dolls, but I like them to be close enough that blushing will hide most of the variance. A lighter head can almost always be blushed down to match a body, but rarely is it worth it to blush a body down to match a head due to the fragile nature of full body blushing in my opinion. Perfect matches aren't necessary, as you'll get some variance even in dolls purchased as fullsets on occasion. However, a near match that isn't jarring to view without clothes absolutely is necessary for me.

I often pick bodies and heads based on hybrids I like from other people's collections that have aged well, as it gives me some idea of how the resin from each company yellows and how likely they are to stay in the same vicinity. I also tend to create my doll characters using what I colloquially refer to as the "Jane Eyre" approach. I find a doll I love through someone's owner photos, I acquire the sculpt/hybrid, then let it grow into its own character within my larger story (much like how Charlotte Bronte wrote "Jane Eyre" due to a minor side character appearing in a Jane Austen novel). Something something good artists copy, great artists steal and all that.

 

I prefer the match to be pretty close but a slight mismatch is ok. Sometimes the sealant on the face up yellows before the resin does and it's not a big deal. I rarely do hybrid and when I do I want at least that the makers matched the same company/year sample even if they aren't exactly the same and may yellow at different rates. It falls within "good enough" range for me. I don't like to play guess and end up with one part yellow and one part pink or paper, have totally done this before and hated it!

 

I wouldn't want every single doll to have the same body either. I suppose that could be a benefit for clothes though.

Does the dye bleed onto their clothes?

 

It shouldn't if you've taken care to wash off any excess. Usually the opposite is the problem, where dye used in the clothes may stain a doll's resin, but that's harder to control unless you dye the fabric yourself, or if you're making the clothes, if you've prewashed your fabrics first. But there are ways to minimize that too, like using a white lining material, or using a bodysuit on the doll before dressing them, depending on the style of clothing you plan on dressing them in. Darker colors are more likely to leave stains on resin (just like if you wear a new pair of dark jeans and haven't washed them first, the dye may transfer to you as well).

 

That sounds like my approach. I get dolls that I admire from seeing them in my friend's and other people's collections.

Thank you! Yes I have learned the hard way on that! I had to use a magic eraser, the entire thing, to get body stains off a doll. The eraser was just in little clumps and bits when I got done. What a mess!

 

I always want them to match as closer as possible or be identical, but I'll try to hybrid if I'm not keen on the body they come with or were made for. That is though with white to the range of "normal skin" tones and resin types that companies usually offer. As previously said, as long as the undertone is the same or the closest it can be, a slight difference in tone is easy to fix with faceup.

When it comes to anything darker in skin tone I'll just go with the body it comes with or that was intended for, because I've tried to find matches of tan and it's very difficult when the information is rarely there and I don't have the money to keep trying different bodies until I find the one. For example, it has been said here that now there are many companies that offer the same standard skin tones that match one another, like mia white, mia pink, etc what it's true. But when it comes to tan dolls that's another story, chances are the pool of available options will be so much more smaller and there aren't that many descriptions or photo comparisons of exactly what tans a company offers. Take for example soom tawny, if you try to find what matches with it you'll hit a wall very quickly between people saying that soom has changed its tawny very frequently and you need to match to a specific batch what is true, to companies that say they have soom tawny but they call it soom tan but in the single photo they have of the skin tones it looks either very warm or just lighter like a more standard tan than what you have. It's never-ending, the difference in tone in darker skin tones is a lot more visible and I can't bother so even if I'm not 100% keen on the body I'll take whatever body the doll is supposed to come with.

 

I’m one of those people who strongly prefer to buy a doll complete whenever possible, because my focus for their character is largely based on how I want to dress them rather than on the uniqueness of their body. But even I, throughout the years, have needed to resort to hybridizing on occasion to get the exact character I wanted. Whenever that happens, my first choice is to go with a sister company with the same resin colors (like Dollzone/Doll Chateau/Dream Valley for instance.) As long as I’m ordering everything new, this works out just fine. However on those occasions when I am dealing with a head (that was only ever released as an individual head, so hybridizing is mandatory) I will pull out my trusty pastels and go to work. I just make certain I’ve ordered the head in a lighter color than the body. In this way I can adjust all the pinks, yellows and browns as necessary. I’ve even managed to match a normal head to a tan body in this way…plenty of thin layers of sealant, and she’s still perfectly matched after many, many years.

 

Small differences in yellowing don't bother me much, completely different undertones bother me a lot.

Rememeber the days when NS and WS changed per batch? I don't miss that at all. I have a NS bluefairy who has a body 1 year older than her head and they are not even close to matching. It bothers me so much.

 

A good number of my dolls are hybrids. I'm not as picky about the resin match as I am about the body matching the character - I've tried to get around that before, and it just bothers me too much when a character is on a body that isn't the right height or build.

When I faceup my own dolls, I do blush the head to match the body. I have a few dolls where the body was acquired after the head that I've wanted to dye for years, but it's funny because I now realize that had I dyed my Luts SDF body ~14 years ago to match CP NS, it would be too pink now given that the head has yellowed over the years. Procrastination has its benefits...?

 

I'm not that picky. A large portion of my collection are hybrids, and the only irritating thing to me is head and body matching when you buy them but ending up waaaaaaaay off years later. Working currently on rebodying my very favorite doll for this reason! Usually the contrast between the parts has to be pretty stark for me to be bothered by it though. I typically let faceups and body blushing hide the worst sins, or I just buy prehistoric dolls that are already as buttery as a biscuit so I don't have to worry about it.

 

I'm picky about body and face sculpts. I always have an exact idea of what shapes this character should have. Color is secondary. It's good if you can match the hybrid, but a lot of things can be hidden with suitable faceup or with blushing.
Sometimes it annoys me that the match is not perfect. But when I love some body and head together because it creates uniqueness, I put up with minor flaws.

 

Agreed! Here to us finding great matches!!

 

It depends. I can be very picky with colors, or not at all. That doesn't make sense, does it?
In fact I prefer a good color match, but I learned to my cost that an initially good color match can end up totally wrong with years. Luckily I make my own faceups, so I can always redo an old faceup/body blush for a slightly better color match. And sometimes, I don't know, I just don't care. Maybe because the body poses well enough, the colors are not that off, or the proportions are good enough to make me forgot about the colors.

 

I’m not picky about resin matching. I have a number of hybrids because I purposefully collected heads to have a larger collection in the smallest space. I don’t bother editing skin tone photos. Other things bug me: seam lines, connected fingers.